ABSTRACT
This chapter contextualises the essays of this volume within wider trends in the study of Roman gender and sexuality. It first summarises scholarship that over the past thirty-or-so years has revealed the ideological centrality of the erect phallus for power and masculinity, as can be seen especially in the dominant role that phallic penetration had in Roman conceptualisations of sexuality. In tandem, other scholarship has shown that not all erotic behaviour in antiquity can be described through this model. The chapter then shows how contributions to this volume nuance, if not challenge, conventional ideas of ‘Priapic’ bodies and sexuality. A final section highlights the contributions made to the study of gendered bodies, including their protection by amulets, their vulnerability to physical harm or evil, and the different ways in which they were depicted. Ultimately, the author suggests that the essays of the volume can provide a new way of looking critically at gender and sexual norms in Roman Italy itself, forcing us to confront the latter’s unrelenting misogyny and adherence (for the most part) to Priapic sexual norms in the face of other (more egalitarian) models.
